Ray Booth The Daily Jeffersonian Published: January 20, 2013 8:00 AM

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Stephanie Greegor's favorite colors are "anything bold" and that's appropriate because she has led a bold, colorful life.

It's a life that has seen her weigh as much as 318 pounds, working at jobs she didn't enjoy and having severe anxiety and depression issues. And it's a life that has seen her become an award-winning journalist who has lost 151 pounds and who is proudest of the fact that her daughter has a role model who is healthy and finally happy.

"The catalyst for me was the birth of my daughter, Kerrigan, nine years ago," Greegor said. "That changed everything. I was 318 pounds and knew I wasn't doing what I loved as a career. I also knew I couldn't be the mother I wanted to be at the weight I was.

"I literally just started walking. I had my cell phone with me because at 318 pounds, I was afraid to walk down the road because I might not be able to walk back. And now, this past fall, I ran the Columbus half-marathon (13.1 miles). That's my second biggest accomplishment, after the birth of my daughter. Prior to the race I had run as much as nine miles at a time but I got sick three weeks before the race. I hit mile nine in the race and hit a wall. I started to walk/run. By mile 12 I was in pain. My hip flexors were just screaming at me and I was like, 'Oh dear, I'm going to die right here on this track.' I got on the phone with my girl Alison (a friend) and told her 'you have to talk me through this.' And she did. Then I got to the end and I was in pain. But I just kept saying to myself, 'I'm either going to finish this or they're going to have to haul my dead body off this course.' When I got to the end, my good friend, Jaimie, walked the last tenth of a mile with me. She crossed the finish line with me."

A Cambridge native, Greegor was once a reporter for The Daily & Sunday Jeffersonian. After leaving The Jeffersonian, she worked for The Independent in Massillon and The Times Recorder in Zanesville before moving to Columbus and becoming an editor for The Publishing Group, which produces niche magazines. She then became a sports writer for The Other Paper, winning several awards for her coverage of the Columbus Blue Jackets. She maintains that connection as a writer and on-air talent for Fox Sports Ohio and has had an interview for a job with the National Hockey Association in New York City.

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And those aren't even her day job.

Greegor's day job is handling social media for corporate channels for Nationwide Insurance.

After making the decision to change, Greegor set about figuring out how to do that. In addition to beginning to walk, she started to seek help for the underlying causes for her weight gain.

"A lot of people look at someone who's obese and they think 'they want to be like that.'" Greegor said. "It's so much more complicated than that. There are so many factors involved. I saw Dr. (Vickie) Pavlik here in Cambridge and she said that an addiction to food is just like an addiction to drugs or alcohol but you can get away from being around drugs or alcohol. You can't get away from being around food. You have to eat. Which is why eating disorders are so hard to break. There are issues that lead to food addiction and you have to address them, however painful that might be.

"In my case, I had some anxiety and depression issues. My anxiety was so bad at one point that I literally could not leave my house for almost two weeks. Couldn't drive. During that time I saw a commercial for the Midwest Center for Anxiety & Depression. I ordered the program, which is a self-guided therapy session that simply asks you questions. I have a dual degree in psychology and English from Muskingum (University) so I had some understanding about the behavioral principles but you don't have to have an educational background in that to understand them. Basically the program says, 'Let's address the underlying issues' and teaches you how to break through the anxiety cycles and break the cycles that were stopping me from being the person and mother I wanted to be.

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"The most successful thing to me about overcoming anxiety and depression and losing the weight is that I never used medication. Doctors tried to prescribe me drugs like Xanax, and I had a lot of trainers recommend certain drugs or programs to lose weight, but, while I realize in some extreme cases drugs are necessary, for 90% of the population, including me, drugs are not the answer. Drugs are easy. Taking pills is an easy solution. And easy solutions never lead to real success. Real success comes from doing the hard work. I had to go through the emotions, the pain, the anger; I had to confront them head-on. And then I had to say no to overeating, even though I wanted to say yes. And I had to get myself off the couch and work out even though I wanted to be lazy. Then, and only then, did I make the changes that led to the place I'm at in my life now. And as a mother, there isn't a better lesson I can teach my child then that."

Greegor said some of the hardest things was to stop accepting excuses and to not listen to what other people think.

"For a long time, I let people dictate what I thought of myself," she said. "They were creating who I was. I wanted to go to Columbus and I wanted to write and people would say, 'You can't go to Columbus' or 'you're too fat' and I said to myself, 'I am going to Columbus and I am going to be a writer.' That's life-changing. Once you stop trying to live your life through other people's eyes, that's amazing. It's easy to make excuses. A lot of people let that stop them. I started to look at solutions rather than the problems. Everyone else is happy to make excuses for you and point out the problems, if you let them. One thing I've always had plenty of is an unending supply of people who are willing to tell me what's wrong with me and why I can't do something. The old me believed them. The new me uses it as fuel to prove them wrong.

"I wanted to weigh less than 200 pounds and I wanted to write. Then one day, I was 199 pounds and I said to myself, 'I'm under 200 pounds and I'm a writer.' That's pretty empowering. I looked around and asked myself what my secondary goals should be. I write down all my goals and I've been journaling my entire journey. It's important to have someone who holds you accountable and for me, that's my daughter. I look at myself through her eyes and determine if I'm satisfied with what I see."

Greegor is launching a new blog: http://runjumpfit.wordpress.com/ The blog will have fitness tips, stories and answers to questions posed by readers. People can send questions to sgreegor@live.com and she will answer them on her blog. People can also friend her on Facebook facebook.com/sgreegor or follow her on twitter at @greegor23.

Greegor also plans to get her personal training certification in two months and start taking a few clients this spring and training at the gym that got her to where she is now -- CORE Fitness Studios. And now that the National Hockey League lockout is over, she'll continue to write for Fox Sports Ohio and do pre-/post-games shows as needed.

Goals farther down the road include "Writing a screenplay -- a hockey drama. Maybe Ben Affleck will star in it or direct it some day. Or maybe Liam Neeson. You never know!"

She also plans to have plastic surgery to remove extra skin around her stomach from the weight loss, calling it the final piece of her journey.

But while Greegor says she's the same person she used to be, it's obvious she is not. It's not the weight loss, but the self-confidence that comes with knowing you can accomplish what you set out to do.

"It's interesting to see how people react to me now that I'm thinner," she said. "I've got the same values but I have more resolve, more confidence. But you know, I feel like I got more respect for my writing when I was heavier. Now, because I'm tall, thin, blond and blue-eyed, somehow I don't write as well? To me, that's a travesty. But also a bittersweet lesson: All women have value. I have a lot of empathy for all women, for all body types. Every one of them has their own set of discriminations. I once penned a column for The Jeff that talked about how it's what's inside that counts. I wrote that when I was overweight, believing that, somehow, life was so much better for thinner women because I, as the overweight woman, had to fight for my rights to just be human. And then one day, I was the thinner woman and I realized that same column applied to them, too. We're all battling for our right to just be ourselves."

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kmcconnell Jan 21, 2013 11:17 PM

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A great feature, very nice to see the spotlight turned on Steph. She's spent her time in Columbus illuminating the accomplishments of others and inspiring her friends and colleagues. A truly wonderful woman, inside and out.

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